Guild Wars 2

Azoqu.8917:

Double the DPS but 2nd lowest DPS in the game so pretty useless especially since it brings nothing to the table.

Thank you. You’re absolutely right, which helps make my point that the defensive utility of Distortion on the Mesmer isn’t even remotely the driving factor in why you bring them to raids when something very comparable but slightly different on a DH doesn’t even remotely justify their presence in a group. Alone without any of the other shiny things a Mesmer brings it just wouldn’t be enough to justify their usage, and that clearly indicates how it is not even close to OP in its current form.

The scaling isn’t particularly amazing, as you can see here, but it could definitely be the cause of the issue you’re describing.

Azoqu.8917:

5 second cool down, 60 second cool down.
Aoe, directional.

Though I guess 1 second and 3 seconds is something!

An internal ICD of 5s doesn’t mean it procs every 5s. At best in the current meta you get one on phantasm every 30s (24s traited), one on SoI every 30 seconds (24s traited), and the 50s cooldown F4. DH also achieves more than double the DPS of a Mesmer who traits everything into getting every possible Distortion share, so you know, there’s that.

I’m not surprised this doesn’t work, since the damage and healing values scale with the power and healing power of the Necromancer, and it’s likely that the source of the buff in the raid training arena doesn’t even have those stats. This also likely explains the curious behavior you pointed out.

I do agree with removing the underwater mines on Aetherblade and addressing the cutscene on Molten Boss (they probably need to fix the farmability of this on L40 first, though), but not so much on the others. Enemies already melt if you take properly buffed groups with good DPS rotations, but most pugs just don’t and so they deal with slower kill times all around. Most of the rest (ie. dolphin dodges) are just L2P issues I’m afraid.

The list of things in raids that can be distorted but not blocked is extremely small. It’s like… green circles at VG, Cairn’s sweep, evolved slubling projectiles, spirits at Matth… and that’s all that I can think of. If that short list is seriously all that some people think it takes to make Distortion any more OP than Shield of Courage, then all I can say is that thankfully ANet are the ones balancing things and not anyone in this thread.

Most serious business regeneration-based healing builds can beat the 10s from Chronomancers anyway, but being honest I’d rather ANet invest in making regeneration a stacking boon like might instead (with obvious number tweaks as a result). That would make it much more dynamic and interesting to use and coordinate.

That would not be ideal, because then there’d be no means to prepare yourself for T4 by doing the lower tier versions of the fractals. Ideally fractal development should have 25 unique levels, so each tier only uses a given fractal once.

Last time we got a new fractal, we got the trailer the Friday before the release. I am expecting one later this week.

The meta makes concessions for Magi Druids that deal 1.5k DPS, a lower DPS point for Chronomancers, and more, all of which is fine. Just remember that the damage has to get made up elsewhere due to a conscious sacrifice of damage for increased defensive utility. Next thing you know someone will post a thread where Lunar Impact is OP because it can zero-to-full an entire subgroup SMH.

TexZero.7910:

Apples to Apples they both did the same thing, and if one instance is considered to be unhealthy enough for the gamestate to be changed, it’s very safe to say that the other isn’t too far behind due to it doing the exact same thing.

Anet decided to nerf Precog because it—in addition to PvE issues—single-handedly turned Chronomancer into an unkillable bunker in PvP. Because Distortion-share as we know it in PvE requires heavy trait investment, it’s never as prevalent in competitive modes because you lose other key traits to achieve it. If Distortion-share required no traits to achieve at the current frequency, I’d agree with you. That it requires so many, however, means I completely disagree with you. You give up a lot to pull it off.

CptAurellian.9537:

Effectively, it’s something like a 12 second CD, that’s relevant. The investment for that isn’t really high.

- Domination Specialization
- Inspiration Specialization
- Illusionary Inspiration Trait
- Blurred Inscriptions Trait

You lose 15-20% personal DPS making these selections. If you miss out on any part of these requirements, the only Distortion you can share (assuming you still have Inspiration) is on a 50 second cooldown.

TexZero.7910:

You do remember pre-cog was changed to aegis yes ?
I certainly hope you also remember what it was before aegis and why it was changed. Hint, it wasn’t for PvP reasons like most skills.

I am well aware. 3 seconds of AOE invulnerability on a 45 second cooldown (coupled with a stunbreak) with zero trait investment is far superior to 1 second of AOE invulnerability on a 50 second cooldown with potential additional applications every so often if you invest an additional two traits and pick a whole specialization to support it. This isn’t even considering that Distortion-sharing existed at the same time as the old Well of Precognition, so you could do both together.

Shield of Courage blocks all attacks for up to 5 allies in range of the skill for 3 seconds untraited. That’s already better than Distortion sharing, which is 1 second sharing. I realize that multiple signets can trigger this effect as well, but at that point you’re heavily traiting in such a way so as to maximize the number of distortions. You, as a mesmer, give up a lot of DPS to be able to achieve that many distortions (the Inspiration specialization itself is a large DPS loss).

Don’t get me wrong, invulnerability is obviously stronger than blocking, but not many things in raids are unblockable, and at least in the case of Aegis it is very easily applied by certain classes in mass if they pick a trait or two. The reason Mesmer gets this stuff “easily” is largely because its damage is already bad in order to maintain quickness, and thus it doesn’t lose much to go all the way.

I fail to see how Distortion-sharing is any more or less broken than something like Shield of Courage or even Well of Precognition allowing others to “ignore” mechanics in similar ways. These things aren’t broken or OP in my opinion, they’re expected high-cost, cooldown-limited, team-protecting skills.

Zok.4956:

So, my conclusion: raids by themselves are fun, but the best and worst experiences are related to the people you play with.

Sounds like an MMO to me for sure.

Yeah, these have been bugged for a while and they should really fix them.

P/P is really good in yolo pub fractals, and really sub-par in organized groups. One thing people forget is that P/P can self-stack 25 might very easily, which means if your pub group lacks a might generator you will do roughly the same damage on P/P as you would on unbuffed staff. Additionally, P/P is stupidly safe, so you can pretty much yolo bosses without fear of death.

That all said, please remember to use staff when you have mobs to cleave.

Here you go. All they need is to add an Arid Dolyak minipet.

Yeah, this is incredibly aggressive and basically makes it impossible to maintain participation unless the enemies literally respawn and throw themselves at your zerg one at a time.

Sublimatio.6981:

Have to disagree again.

Agree to disagree then.

Sublimatio.6981:

You’re not being appreciative

It has nothing to do with being appreciative or not; I just feel bad for how much effort ANet has to put into something like this when a simple apology would’ve done just as well.

• The meta right now isn’t fun.
• I’ve already gotten all of the exclusive rewards I care about.
• I’m bored of conquest.
• I miss defensive amulets.

Honestly, this whole thread is why we can’t have nice things. In the future, ANet, consider just fixing the bug affecting players and not dealing with sending people stuff. I don’t think anyone in the beginning was seriously going to lose sleep over some missed loot, especially when the bug was fixed fast enough to still be able to complete the boss in the same week.

Alternatively, OP, they should just do what PvP did and include a few grandmaster marks in the final skirmish reward track chests so that you can make some pieces just by playing the game mode.

This is a good idea.

I am entirely certain that if the raid team were to take on any additional modes it would severely impact their bottom-line content development schedule. For me, it’s far more important that we get regular raid wing content drops of the style we already have than it is that we get additional modes that cater to a small portion of an already small portion of the player-base.

zealex.9410:

I dought that a chrono with quickness on 5 ppl gives more than 20-25 k dps. But still, quickness is a unique effect. An effect worth its own spec tbh who says they cant have a new spec for lets say guard be supporty deal more personal dmg thanks to the lack of alacrity while pulsing out quickness. Values will be the same between the specs for balance’s sake and bam no more chronos.

I think the breakeven is higher than that, but it varies for every composition and changes based on how cooldown-limited a class is that is paired with the Chronomancer. Chronomancers also bring other utility like Distortion-share that prevents the DPS classes from interrupting DPS rotations, and while that’s hard to put a number to is pretty significant in itself.

I do agree that the role of a quickness generator could certainly be usurped by a future elite spec, but Chronomancer is pretty awesome overall. Let’s also not forget that this discussion is entirely theoretical, anyway, because Chronomancers provide Alacrity uptime which pushes their value even higher.

Can we stop getting recolors of the Fractal weapons and have them work on Fractal armor sets instead? Have those be the crazy prestige items, however they’re acquired, but we don’t need more iterations of the same stuff.

zealex.9410:

Not nececeraly. If you remove alacrity theres a big group dos loss in dpsif we take the rest of the mesmer’s dos and add to that the group dps thanks to quickness we have the dmg values a mesmer brings.

You’re not wrong, but no single class does remotely enough DPS to beat out applying quickness to an entire subgroup currently, and somehow I doubt ANet is ever going to make something that strong without immediately nerfing it.

1. Tank doesn’t mean anything in GW2 except having a little extra toughness to take boss aggro. It doesn’t mean you’re a fully defensive build.
2. Chronomancers are taken primarily for Quickness, though Alacrity is also important. If you removed Alacrity, Chronomancers would still be taken for Quickness.
3. Chronomancers have better defensive utility on pure DPS builds thanks to Distortion-share, Signet of Inspiration, and Well of Precognition compared to other classes.
4. All of the other classes you mentioned pale in comparison to overall Chronomancer utility by a lot. You’d have to significantly beef up the other classes with offensive utility to rival a Chronomancer’s spot in raids. This could happen in the next expansion, by the way.

It would be pretty cool if each server had a unique logo, and then you had the ability to show it on guild armor sets instead of your guild logo. That’s the only way I could realistically see this happening.

I did it this morning and it worked just fine. Are you sure you didn’t have it already completed like Linken suggested above?

I much prefer Mesmer Distortion-sharing the slam so that people can precast and get their rotations going, but the general sentiment is the same as other posters: Always lure it right on top of one of the phantasms, and then just mitigate the attack.

We’re still recruiting friendly, loyal, and casual people who would like to play with us in random content! More than anything we’re looking for new friends who are willing to yolo through dungeons, Fractals, Raids, open-world content, and other things with us. If the things we do and the type of people we are sounds good to you based on the OP, please contact one of the officers!

This is remarkably kind of you folks! I will admit that I was pretty frustrated when I killed KC twice during the time that this bug was active and didn’t get loot either time, especially when it killed my static’s raid night, but the issue was fixed quickly enough in the week that I didn’t consider it to be too devastating. That said, thank you guys so much for going out of your way to compensate us players even when you had absolutely no obligation to do so.

zealex.9410:

If they keep it only at one mode there should be a step up in dificulty. Raids were supposed to be hard and every wing after w1 was easier (excluding matt). When something is easier than something you have done previously then it considered “not challenging”.

It can be tough to objectively analyze the difficulty at this stage, so I’m not surprised some hold this opinion. W1 is actually super ‘easy’, the only reason it seemed hard at first is because players weren’t used to the level of coordination that raids demanded. The raiding playerbase has gotten significantly better at the game since then, so much so that even tougher bosses that would’ve demolished teams in the past are seen as “easier”. Crystal Reid from the ANet raids dev has even commented on this before on livestream.

Being honest I like the current model. Bosses like Xera, Matthias, Deimos, and Sabetha are among my favorites because they require more strict coordination than the others, but I like having easier bosses with diverse mechanics, and then CMs for harder encounters when you want to push yourself. If very cool and prestigious rewards continue to be tied to CMs, much like Demon’s Demise, then they’ll still be great entries to the game going forward.

The only thing I wish they’d do is make the raid CMs have repeatable rewards like fractal CM100 so that more groups would run it regularly. It’s hard to convince my statics to run CMs all over again when they don’t offer anything special.

Just going to chime in here that Aetherblade is my second favorite Fractal since its revamp and I don’t want anything about it to change. The boss is pretty cool and refreshing compared to every other tank/spank boss in Fractals, so I hope they keep it as-is.

SlyDevil.3952:

If you hit the colossi with a non-projectile cc it will remove their shield, glyph of tides does this well. Electric wyvern, GoEqual, etc…

TIL

I let members of my guild run off-meta stuff like healer Herald periodically for random bosses we’re extremely confident on. It keeps things interesting, lets players try new things, and doesn’t otherwise cause any problems. Consider also running the healer Herald as flak kiter for Sabetha; it’s pretty fun there! I also find it very effective at Matthias. That said, don’t expect it to fly in any pub that dares label itself “experienced” because they’re only interested in the meta of the meta.

P.S. Healer Minstrel’s Herald is totally awesome in WvW. I use mine there when I run out of raids to beat in a week.

Power Ranger is pretty bad in Fractals because it has awful cleave with half of its weapons and camping sword alone is very far behind condition Ranger’s damage. The major advantage power builds have in Fractals is that they get the 10% potion damage modifier, but even then power Ranger just doesn’t cut it anywhere by Solid Ocean because of the permanent reflects on the trash at the end.

Fixing broken forum bug.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Miyani Items. A lot of folks have rightly pointed out that all of Miyani’s items should go into storage. I haven’t made a final determination on this yet, but it’s likely that we will cut at least some of these from the list.

At a minimum Mystic Crystal and Philosopher’s Stones need to deposit, but the others are always bought individually specifically for usage at that moment. Mystic Crystals and Philosopher’s Stones are bought in quantities that nearly always leave leftovers.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Indigo Mushrooms + Mushroom Milk. I’m really on the fence about this one. I had wanted to allow them to keep dropping because they do make foods that can continue to be used, but I don’t particularly want to include them in storage because of how you start acquiring them. I’ll think about it more though.

They’re specifically for legendary collections so I say do not include them. Doesn’t make sense for them to deposit when no other legendary collection items do; people will lose them via deposit all and think that it’s bugged.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Mystic Runestone. If I am going to put in Icy Runestone, I should probably put in this one as well.

Agreed.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Marks, Talismans, Seals, Medallions, and Crests. I have almost zero desire to put all 25 into storage, but I will rethink Crests specifically because of their inclusion in Amalgamated Gemstone crafting.

Quite frankly, if you’re going to include orbs and doubloons, you really ought to include these. They’re the exact same thing just with a different icon, and to not include them is pretty inconsistent and counterintuitive. Absolutely the crests are the most important, but I think you should add them all.

LinseyMurdock.4165:

Ascended crafting materials that make Grandmaster Marks. This is going to be a tough one. There are a lot of items here. I’ll consult with the PvP team and my fellow rewards folks.

At least include marks because you can get them as rewards from PvP leagues, and having them litter your bank/inventory would be super annoying. It would be different if they were strictly crafted to be immediately used, but that’s not the case.

Thanks for your hard work and considerations, Linsey!

Ookamikun.6472:

I thought it was referring to Charr killing the false gods since it’s supposed to be Scorchrazor?

This is correct. It’s a weapon symbolic of the Charr’s history and has nothing to do with Human gods.

@OP: Find a raiding guild in the forum dedicated for finding guilds instead of the LFG, which is for finding a group.

1. Lornar’s Pass
2. Dry Top
3. Tangled Depths
4. Plains of Ashford
5. Straits of Devastation

Generally speaking I dislike massive maps with little going on. Lornar’s Pass is the worst offender, and Plains of Ashford and Straits of Devastation fall into a similar category. Tangled Depths is just a labyrinth beyond anything else in-game and even after tons of experience with the map I still get turned around. Lastly, I dislike Dry Top because it requires following strange paths (that followed the historic LW season 1 story) to get to new areas.

Kydar Schattendolch.6879:

Necro only reduces the amount of drain per second. LF itself is only effected by Vitality. Thats not the same in this case

I beg to differ.

These should seriously just auto-consume like literally every other source of Badges/Proofs in-game.

I really hate silent raids. Sure, I know all the mechanics and I can do everything just fine, but voice chat enables your team to improvise much better. Pubs who screw up even a single cannon on a silent Sabetha run, for instance, are typically screwed. Meanwhile with voice chat you can get a backup there and clear it before the next time that cannon comes around. This is also true for no updraft Gorseval where a few downs can make you fail the no updraft at the last 33%… but with voice chat you can communicate an impromptu updraft and still get the kill that go.

Just do yourself and everyone else a favor and have voice chat. As long as someone calls it, no one else even has to talk and it works so much better. As maddoctor said, however, you just need to be able to listen. There’s never an obligation to talk.

I still think that all healing should penetrate shroud and that alone would address many of the class’s overarching issues. It’s a really bad mechanic that other players can blast water fields to heal you and have it completely wasted because you’re in shroud.